# 20-Apr-2022

A mid-April trip to the parental abode turned into a bit of a saga, with
more annoyances and impediments than the fairly mellow run last winter.

Monday started as a beautiful Spring day in New England, sunny with temps in
the 50s.  We knew there was a freak April storm barreling toward us, but the
morning's cloudless weather was completely deceptive.  Basically I drove
straight into the teeth of that monster-- by about 3pm in Pennsylvania, light
haze to the west had thickened up to dark overcast, and I started going through
heavy rain bands.  Fortunately most of my charging stops stayed reasonably
dry, but by dusk there was wet sleet hitting the windshield and the temps had
plummeted almost to freezing.  Past Harrisburg PA, there was clearly an inch
or two of snow on the farm fields to either side of the highway.

I made acceptable progress nonetheless; there were minor traffic delays here
and there since it was a normal working weekday evening.  I figured making it
a good way into Virginia would be sufficient progress for the day.  Then, just
as I approached the PA/MD line, all the traffic came to an almost complete
standstill, and stayed that way.  After about 20 minutes of inching forward
maybe 50 feet once in a while, I pulled up Google-traffic on the phone to see
WTF.  It showed *ten miles* of solid dark red, extending almost down to I-70.
Evidently, because of a multi-vehicle crash that officials had been trying to
deal with since the middle of that cold rainy afternoon; it's what happens
when truckers don't pay attention:

Really, there should be some way to arrange that people responsible for
incidents like this get BILLED for everyone else's lost TIME, wasted
while stuck in the results of their stupidity.  This is why many people
arriving at a backed-up section start laying into their hazard flashers for
the benefit of those coming up behind.  This stretch would have been a totally
non-noteworthy few minutes of cruising along, rather than sitting there
basically unmoving, surrounded by idling trucks who needed to get to their
deliveries too, and watching the semi-frozen drip coursing *down* the
windshield instead of *up*.

I managed to creep to an exit and bailed off, quickly charting a bypass route
on back country roads, and found my way to my next charge just south of that
mess.  Now it was raining for real, cold and miserable.  I do have a section
of trash bag I can put over the charging port in such situations, clamped down
under the hood, to try and keep the high-current electrics drier.  After
losing an extra hour on all that, I kept going, and got past Harrisonburg a
bit where I pulled in for an unprecedentedly chilly overnight for the region
and time of year.  I had not brought the full cold-weather car-camping rig,
only parts of it.  Fortunately, I'd layered my 12V heated blanket under the
sleeping bag, and if I hadn't included that the 35F overnight would have been
basically impossible to endure without running the energy-wasteful cabin heat.

I had also popped out the back of the storm by then, so I didn't get wet
while in and out of the car prepping it for the night, and the next morning
was still cold but beautiful and sunny.  There were still snow flurries in the
high country along the backbone of Virginia, and it was really amusing to see
Spring happening along the roadside, with lots of flowers and trees leafing
out, and a layer of snow on everything from the previous night.  I got down
to the "big drop" on I-77 at the NC line and things were starting to warm up
nicely as I got some way into NC, so my spirits were improved.

Then, the tire-pressure alarm went off.  The monitoring system in the Kona
shows the actual pressure, which I keep above its max display of 51, and I
watched with some degree of horror as the number on the left rear tire rapidly
dropped, first alarming at 44, then 35, then 26, and down to 15 as I was
slowing down ... there was no time left to find the next exit and pull off
somewhere safe, I had to just dive for the shoulder and get stopped before
total disaster ensued.  Knowing immediately which tire it was helped me decide
how far to squeeze over and leave some workspace still on the asphalt of the
shoulder.  I got out to inspect things, and could clearly hear the remaining
air hissing out as I bent down to assess out the damage and locate the hole.

Given that the door-placard pressure for the stock sidewall-51 PSI tires is
36 PSI but it alarmed at 44, it's clear that the TPMS also observes the *rate*
of pressure drop to detect a rapid leak situation.  Clever of it, and damn
useful as it gave me a precious few extra seconds to evaluate the situation.

The specialty aftermarket spare wheel I'd ordered from Modernspare.com paid
for itself that day.  I had to uproot my sleep rig a bit to get to it and the
jack kit under the rear deck, but didn't have to unpack the whole car like
I've seen some people do.  So there I was, on the shoulder of a respectable
downhill along I-77, jacking the left rear of the car up and swapping wheels,
with semis swooshing by at 70 MPH a couple of feet behind my head.  But having
the right tools meant that I could get moving again in short order and get
myself out of that death-trap, and to then go as far as the next charge point
where I'd figure out what to do next.

Something about the appearance of the puncture didn't look simple, and once
again, technology to the rescue: I decided to google up local tire places and
have professional eyes on this before I attempted a simple plug patch.  I carry
one of those plug kits, in addition to the spare wheel, jack, lug wrenches,
and plain old hand pump.  Because you just never know when this sort of thing
is going to happen.  And there's no way I would try to rely on the shrill
little compressor and "goop kit" to quickly get out of a bind, which is what
Hyundai gives you by default.  Many people don't seem to realize that topping
up car tires is totally doable with an ordinary bicycle floor pump -- in fact
it's less pressure than in a bicycle tire, just a lot more *volume* to be
transferred in.

So while waiting for an inordinately slow charger, I started calling around
and longer story short, found a local place that would take me as a walk-in
and could examine things and do a proper patch job.  The shop was all of a
half-mile from where I was sitting, and the person on the phone said "sure,
bring it on in!"  By then I had enough charge to go one more short leg, so
unhooked and a few minutes later, walked into a pleasant front room at the
shop carrying my specimen.  They were great; the desk manager Ashley I'd been
talking to was friendly, professional, and efficient.  She and some of the
other women around the shop had that general appearance and demeanor we often
see in, say, theatre tech -- a bit butch, if you will, with close-cropped hair
and various body-art adornments, and very competent at their jobs.  Respect!
She wrote me up and rolled the wheel into the back, and I went outside into
the now gorgeous day to wait for word.  Which came very soon, except it was
"you need a new tire".  Not entirely unexpected, though.

This was no simple puncture, apparently some of the belts were physically
severed and thus unsafe to put back on the road.  My suspicion about it being
a more complex matter was confirmed.  Here's what the exterior looked like:

I didn't like how the tread-block looked either mashed or worn down next to
the hole, and the disturbance in the siping next to that, which is why I
wanted someone with experience to look at it.  I agreed to a new tire, any
old thing they had in stock of the same size would do, so they went ahead to
change it.  I went around to the open bay door; the tire machines were right
there just inside, and I chatted with the guy doing the work and asked if I
could inspect the tire once he got it off the rim.  He handed it to me and I
got a good look at the *inside* surface.  This is with my finger pushing in
a bit from the tread side:

The rough area of the original puncture is visible, but the collateral damage
next to that is disturbing.  Clearly, some massively injurious piece of
something had likely lodged in the tire and as it kept hitting the road, had
really mangled things up until it finally fell out and caused the actual leak.
I have no idea what kind of object could do that and no idea of what I might
have run over shortly before the TPMS alerted.  A largish screw, perhaps,
invisible in the lane on a high-speed approach?  It could have been kicked up
by the (unharmed) front tire, and then stuck into the rear at some random
angle and continued to mangle things up as it banged repeatedly against the
road.  I never heard any telltale clicking, or had any idea how long it might
have been stuck in there.  But having a modern pressure-monitoring system
built-in gave me enough warning, barely, to prevent a high-speed blowout.

And the entire time I was at the shop, not *one* word about my feet.  Not even
a question.  The guy doing the re-mounting brought me straight through the main
shop bay up to the office to cash out, which most places would never allow due
to some nebulous "insurance reasons".  Professional and sensible all in one,
a rare combination these days, and I might as well call them out in highest
favor: Woodie's Auto, in Huntersville NC;  woodiesautoservice.com.  They're
not afraid of customers who know what they're looking at and just need extra
help with special skills and equipment.

I reassured the shop folks that I would be fine putting the repaired wheel
back on myself, got under way again, and did the change at the next charging
stop.  Charging time gives all sorts of opportunity to do the things I used
to catch up on at fuel stations anyway, so efficient use of time makes the
overall trip take about the same amount of time as it used to with the Prius!
The specialty spare was fine going another 100+ miles, it's designed for
that, and not your typical donut.  So I'd still lost another two+ hours on my
trip, but it could have been a lot worse given what I was hearing from the
first place I tried calling.  Booked out until *Saturday*?!  No thanks.

This charge was at another Electrify America at a Wal-mart, which is rapidly
becoming a very typical installation.  EA has apparently built an alliance
that seems to be turning Wal-marts into "travel centers" for electric
vehicles, rather than locating at the typical truck-stop plazas.  A very few
of the mainstream fuel/food oases have partnered with other charging networks,
but those are few and very scattered -- and along I-81 through Virginia, EA
is presently about the only game in town.  Which semi-sucks, because they're
a bit expensive and don't have the little RFID tap-cards like I have for other
networks.  Their app also has accessibility problems, so I just pay with an
EMV-chipped card.  Still, right now, in the spring of 2022?  It's way better
than buying gas.

Since the TPMS had been run for quite a few miles with a missing sensor, it
took its sweet time to re-learn that the left-rear sensor was back in action.
What's utterly stupid about that system is that if one sensor is missing, it
refuses to show pressures in the *rest* of the tires!  It just shows the big
tire-cross-section symbol and "check tire pressure monitoring system".  Duh.
What if I was about to lose another one while running on the spare??  What if
whatever affected the back tire had also put a slower leak in the front one?
Now I had no way of knowing other than a visual inspection, which in this
case revealed nothing.

The stock tires that came on the Kona are also not held in particular favor
by the owner community, and several of them are picky enough that they would
change to a better set soon after buying the car.  One thing I learned about
these wheels that day was that the big chunky *rims* are the really heavy
part -- the *tire* that the guy handed me to inspect weighed almost nothing
by comparison.  Well, the stock "Nexen" feet do seem a bit fragile, and if its
belts were so easily mangled, that's not good.  So maybe I should junk the
remaining three on the car and get three more of the same BF Goodrich that
the shop put on?  Those aren't top of the line either, but they feel way more
substantial than stock, with deeper treads and a somewhat more aggressive
all-weather pattern.  Perhaps not designed for lowest rolling resistance, but
as also observed by the Prius community when the second-gen cars came stock
with the infamously poor Goodyear Integrity tires, optimizing *only* for low
rolling resistance does not perhaps yield the best quality product.